It was dusk, when monkeys chatter as they settle in for the night,
Slow to leap, and an easy target for poachers, the Pennant's red colobus ranks among the world's most
endangered primates. Preserving its island sanctuary demands good science-and law enforcement.
sole adult male was nearly twice as big as the
others. He was simultaneously muscled and
rotund, his Buddha belly at odds with his sharp
featured, obsidian black face. So sculpted were
the angles of his cheeks, brows, and nose that he
looked as if he wore a mask. White fur bristled
around his face; his rump shone red, blue, and
purple. Whenever he moved, the other drills got
out of his way. At last, when they had eaten their
fill, the troop clambered down the tree and van
ished into the shadowy forest.
"Isn't it remarkable?" Butynski said after the
last drill was gone. For nearly 30 minutes the
biologists had been able to observe monkeys
that weren't frightened of humans. "No one
has studied the ecology and behavior of these
90 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC * AUGUST 2008
animals in the wild', he said. "But that might
be possible here now: Someone could habituate
a troop of drills to humans and start a long
term study."
Even with the number of dead monkeys that
the BBPP staff had counted in Malabo's market,
the northern caldera survey revealed a substan
tial and healthy primate population. "They're
certainly not naive anymore, and they're not as
abundant as in 1986, but they're still in relatively
good numbers," Butynski said. His calculations
suggested that the caldera's forest shelters a
little more than one monkey troop a kilome
ter. "It's a much lower rate of encounter than
what we recorded in 1986," he noted. That year
there were almost twice as many monkeys.
TIM LAMAN